End of week 6

I started this week by revisiting Ford's thesis 'Reducing Domestic Energy Consumption Through Behaviour Modification'. I gave particular focus to the probabilistic model used to combine machine learning outputs with additional data, e.g. time of day and appliance average usage time.

I also read Mudasser's 9 month report before attending the first Research Methodologies course. The focus was on the general time scale of a PhD and the structure and content of the 9 month report. Specifically, I found the most useful outcome finding out about the flow of reports. We were told how the introduction should introduce each topic in the literature review. This would ensure that only relevant literature was discussed, and the review was therefore kept closely on-topic.

We also had a visit from Mike Osbourne, a researcher from Oxford University. Mike's interests lie in machine learning, specifically the application of gaussian processes. We discussed the how such techniques could be applied within the energy domain as part of the ORCHID project. We concluded that in the area of NIALM, there was a significant gap for this kind of approach.

Finally, we have started an Energy Special Interest Group within ECS. I have created a wiki, which the group is planning to use to share literature and ideas. I would encourage anyone within the group to visit it and expand it with your area of interest/research.